From a distance, they appear like autumn foliage: millions of endangered monarch butterflies blanketing trees in a kaleidoscope of brown, orange and black. As the crisp mountain air warms, they flutter above dazzled visitors who have come to see an annual tradition that persists despite the environmental and human pressures threatening it. Monarch butterflies fly at the Sierra Chincua butterfly sanctuary in Angangeo, Michoacan state, Mexico. December 3, 2022 REUTERS/Raquel Cunha Every year, migratory monarchs travel up to 2,000 miles (3,000 km) from the eastern United States and Canada to spend the winter among the forests of central and western Mexico. Winter weekends bring hundreds of visitors to Sierra Chincua, an idyllic monarch sanctuary in the western state of Michoacan,...
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Close your eyes for a moment and imagine a butterfly. My money says the fluttering insect you’re envisioning has black-veined, reddish-orange wings outlined with white specks — the iconic attributes of much loved American monarch butterfly. Unfortunately, the species, which populates many childhood memories, is in trouble. The migrating monarch butterfly was added last week to the “red list” of threatened species and categorized as “endangered” for the first time by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. That’s two steps from extinct in the wild. FILE PHOTO: Monarch butterflies land on branches at Monarch Grove Sanctuary in Pacific Grove, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Nic Coury, File) Scientists blamed the monarchs’ plummeting numbers on habitat ...
Read MoreThe migratory monarch butterfly, which has for millennia turned North American woodlands into kaleidoscopes of colour in one of nature's most spectacular mass migrations, is threatened with extinction, international conservationists said on Wednesday. Every autumn, migratory monarchs fly thousands of miles (km) from breeding grounds in the eastern United States and Canada to spend the winter closely huddled in trees in Mexico and California. Numbering in the millions in the 1990s, the butterfly's population has since shrunk by more than 85%, scientists estimate. FILE PHOTO: Monarch butterflies sit on a plant at El Rosario sanctuary, in El Rosario, in Michoacan state, Mexico February 11, 2021. REUTERS/Toya Sarno Jordan On Wednesday it was placed in the endangered category of th...
Read MoreNew study shows warmer temperatures and increases during the summer are compensating for negative factors, stabilizing breeding trends Largely because of well-publicized, diminishing winter colonies in Mexico and California, monarch butterflies across North America have been long thought to be declining as a result of diminishing summer habitat. Previous butterfly research shows that the size of overwintering monarch colonies has fallen across several decades. But what is happening when monarchs breed in the summer was less clear. In a new research study published in Global Change Biology, lead author Michael Crossley, assistant professor and agricultural entomologist at the University of Delaware, and his collaborators examined trends in breeding monarchs across their entire range,...
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